Jacob Hornberger, founder and president of the Future of Freedom Foundation, discusses why the Jose Padilla case may be the most important of our lifetimes; how Americans lost most of their Constitutional protections against government abuses, thanks to runaway Executive branch power and a deferential Congress and court system; why the “no touch” sensory deprivation treatment of Padilla qualifies as torture and probably made him crazy; the curious timing of John Ashcroft’s ballyhooed “dirty bomb” allegations against Padilla – right after Coleen Rowley blew the whistle on FBI failures before 9/11; why an appeals court deemed Padilla’s seventeen year prison sentence too lenient; and the similarities between the collection of US national security laws imposed since 9/11 and Egypt’s emergency law.
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